Why not Emigration? Danes Send Message
06/09/2008
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Just got back from a conference on "Post-Christian Europe and Resurgent Islam" held in (symbolically) Vienna. The numbers are really alarming and the mood was dire. But there was no mention of the obvious answer: directing public policy toward persuading Muslims to, you know, GO AWAY. After all, there is emigration as well as immigration. But if you mentioned it, people looked at you oddly.

Yet of course minorities do emigrate. In the U.S., we are slowly beating it into the political elite's consciousness that attrition of the illegal alien presence through law enforcement is the alternative to the much-dreaded mass deportations. Three recent examples: the near-elimination of the Protestant minority in Southern Ireland after the 1921 Treaty; the radical reduction of Quebec's Anglophones after the French-first language legislation of the 1970s; the near-eradication of Middle Eastern Christians.

As it happens, the May 29 Economist Magazine makes this inadvertantly clear in an article, Covering Up: A far-right party takes on the Islamic headscarf, tut-tutting about the Danish People's Party's popular campaign to stop public employees displaying Muslim symbols:

One response has come from Danish-born Muslims. A poll by Politiken, a daily, of 315 young Muslim students, found that two-thirds of them were considering emigrating after graduation. Most gave as their reason ”the tone of the Danish debate about Muslims”.
Of course, it's distressing to see this degree of compulsion, especially since the cowardly Danish govenment, which depends on DPP support, has decided to ban Christian crosses too. But, as I've pointed out elsewhere, immigration is the Viagra of the State - for good and ill.

The DPP is sending a message. And the message is being heard.

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